We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (7 page)

‘A bird, yea,’ said King Edward ruthlessly. ‘’Twill be a hawk that returns to England. Now, its prey flies high, and makes a great clamouring, but after—why, if men desire to know who struck the fiercest blows, ask the ones who felt them.’

The Governor laughed wonderfully at this jest, and then they fell to speaking in Flemish, most of it that I could gather concerning King Louis, the threat of invasion to precious trade. And Gruthuyse told us that his horses, men and house were ours, and he was better than his word, for we were lodged most splendidly in his mansion at Bruges.

My window frame was coiled and carved with all manner of device. Looking down, I could see the bustling street, and the women of Bruges in their high caps. Sir John Paston had once written home about these women, saying that they were fiercer than any man in lust; yet, writing thus, he had not seemed displeased by the notion. And there was I, standing watching them. The wintry wind caught at these very caps, twirling the veiling like frost about the lovesome faces, lifting the skirts higher than was seemly. John Paston had said they were easily led from virtue. I fingered the window frame and felt the shape of a marguerite. Moon daisy. In Bloomsbury, growing tall. Margetta, easily seduced, and a grey whipping sea between us. Misery breeds on idleness, and the Seigneur de la Gruthuyse had swamped the King with gentlemen and boys to work his every will; so I was no longer called to swathe him in towels, rub rose-water into his great bare body, or play the lute and sing. I was treated with respect as one of his Grace’s entourage, and as one who would retrieve the bleeding bird of York, along with the thousands waiting somewhere in mist. But amid the costly fog which clouded the Governor’s soul and all our days of exile, I thought on my love, and, in a chamber fraught with snoring Flemish gentlemen, nightly lay trembling upon my own mind.

I was in this unholy state when I met with Richard of Gloucester, one evening after supper. The King had gone with the Governor to Tournai, for there was a freeman of that city whom Edward desired to meet, being possessed of the fairest wife in Flanders... Catherine de Faro. The young pig stewed in Rhenish lay languidly in my belly as I left the chamber.

‘How does my lord?’ I asked mechanically.

He seemed restless. ‘I am but lately returned from Lille,’ he said. ‘From my sister, the Duchess Margaret. The King has tried all persuasions, but my brother-in-law will not yet commit himself.’

Charles le Téméraire, your rashness must be sleeping, I said to myself; and then aloud, in a sudden uprush of woe:

‘Sir, will the Duke ever bring himself to aid our cause? Will he wait until King Louis invades Flanders? Shall we never return to England?’

He studied me. ‘You are dolorous,’ he remarked. ‘Would that your keen sight could pierce the future!’

‘I am no seer, my lord,’ I answered. ‘To my mind, it is a sin against Holy Church.’ Cackling, greybearded Hogan. English fields. Marguerites. Margetta.

Richard was smiling, his look still intent. ‘Yet how much easement we should know at this time, if you were blessed, or cursed, with such a gift.’

‘The King’s astrologer fills his office well,’ I said nervously. ‘My sight is but good for spying out devices, warships and the like.’

‘And faces,’ he said gently, and as I did not know how to reply to this, he went on, laughing: ‘A plague on my musing. Let us leave it to Master Astrologer, and when we are both crabbed old men, we will see how sure his shaft struck the blazon!’

I sighed at this last word, for he was speaking already like the Flemish archers, of the squared board divided into differing values, and not the homely English butt and marker. Oft-times I saw these squares so close they merged into one and I had been bested that day by an arrogant young knight from St Pol.

‘Come,’ he said, touching my arm lightly. ‘A diversion would be well—for both of us. I know a fine inn, where you shall recover from me your three shillings.’

A cluster of esquires came darting, gibbering in the alien tongue I was beginning to hate. They brought us cloak and horse and, riding down the cobbled slope across the square, where pigeons, wind-frozen, snuggled together, we shook off their company; they were but foreigners, and weakly.

I had to stoop to enter the tavern, and he did not, yet it was at him that they looked. There was an unreality about the people within. A line of brawny young men occupied the bench along one wall. They rolled their heads about against the panels, laughing lackteeth at some frolic. A brace of them confronted one another, palms clasped, elbows sliding in a puddle of spilled ale. With gruff cries they urged each other on, in this test of strength. Two merchants sat at a far table, their voices softer by a breath than the slight chink of coin passing from hand to hand, muffled by velvet pouch. Three Flemish women nodded over hot ale, their faces plain as platters. A Spanish seaman like a monkey postured and smirked, offering (in Latin too, the holy tongue of philosophers and the Church!) to sing of his adventures. Jesu! I thought, when shall I hear English voices about me again? The landlord shuffled forward, and it was all unreal, like a tableau set up for a play. His eyes were crusted by a film of age and sickness. He made owlish looks at my lord, who stood wrapped in his plain blue cloak (a present from the Governor). The tavern-keeper did not know him; I was on the point of crying: ‘Make way, master, for a prince of England,’ when I heard Richard say, in courteous French:

‘Your best, a flagon, friend, and a private chamber.’

‘You are merchants?
Hoe veel gelt
?’ said the landlord, his eyes crawling from Richard to me.

‘We are thirsty men,’ replied my lord. ‘If you would know our names, mine is Dickon Broome, this gentleman... Mark—Mark Eye.’ Ah! the whims of princes! Yet my counterfeit name pleased me, for it smacked of Toxophilus. Gloucester took money from his pouch—I missed its value but it drew a smile from our host’s withered gums, and he shed ten winters.

‘
Als’t’u belieft
,’ he said, taking a handful of flickering light from one of the tables. He urged us up steep stairs into a small firelit room. He crept about for a moment, casting on fresh peats, then poured a dark-looking wine into pewter hanaps, and left us.

‘I am grateful to my lord,’ I said, feeling warmed at last.

He laughed. ‘It is the Governor’s money.’ Though he spoke cheerily, I knew that this fact irked him, and that his flashing mood was a match to mine that night. We were like two restive steeds.

‘To your Grace!’ I drank, and knew this wine would undo me. All the fierce foreign suns had been spawned in it. A dagger’s white fire had bred mischief in it. My bold and melancholy humour rose to meet its downward thrust. I sat opposite Richard, and the carved wood pressed my back, so stiff was I, so martial and controlled.

‘How like you your name, Mark Eye?’ he said. ‘I had to think of something pleasing to you.’

‘I like it well, my lord,’ I answered. ‘And your own trips easily from the tongue.’

‘Broome,’ he murmured. ‘The glorious
planta genista
. Plantagenet wearing a coat of yellow flowers. Geoffrey d’Anjou’s blazon. Edward used to do this,’ he said, pleased as a child. ‘He would enter houses under a pseudonym and folk would become enamoured of his charm and graciousness. They would talk to him as if he were not the King of England.’

For a while then we cast the dice, and again he won; feigning despondency, I drank deep with a mocking smile. He did for me the service I was bound to do for him in England—he poured the drink before I could guess his intent. He was still unquiet; his hands were not as steady as his eyes.

‘I know little of you. Only that you come from Kent.’

‘Yea, that is where I was raised, my lord.’

‘You love it well,’ he said.

‘I love it well,’ (repeating the lesson). ‘As you love Middleham.’

‘It is the fairest land in all the world,’ he said softly. ‘Though I have seen but little of the world. Every hope, every dream, every desire I ever knew was there.’ The steady eyes dropped to the hanap which he turned round and round.

‘Be of good cheer, my lord,’ I said. I sought to fill his cup, misjudged—my sight all gone to perdition—and sat down again, shaking the table.

‘There is no sky like that sky,’ he said softly. ‘No earthly winds could shake my spirit as they did; and in the Hall at evening, although a great fire warms the body, they still cry from without the walls. They run like ghosts, whispering and roaring.’

‘Strange thoughts,’ I muttered. I took a gulp of my wine, swallowing air, and shivered.

‘Do they affright you?’ he asked with a smile. ‘’Tis needless fear. Those are not demons of whom I speak. Beings of good, not evil—spirits to ward off spirits—the protectors.’

As if I had been there, the Great Hall at Middleham emerged in my mind’s sight. There were hounds, and laughing children, and noble Warwick. Cursed Warwick. Many bright candles, unlike the rushlight that smoked between us on the table. There was music, and the moorland winds within that music. Dulcimer and viol and cromorne.

‘Out of the dark—into the light,’ said the wine. I shook my fuddled head.

Richard of Gloucester sat waiting.

‘There was an ancient, holy man.’ This, foolishly, for the wine had run off with a venerable name. ‘Who told his King: “Lo, while we sit in the Hail in fireglow and brightness, there enters in a sparrow from out of the storm. He flies the length of the Hall and is gone, through the window. Thus, he departs, after a brief space in the gaiety and the company, again into the darkness. And who shall say that our span of life is not like unto this sparrow’s flight? For none knows from what dark bourne he came, neither do they know whither he departs”.’

I tilted the flagon. He set his palm across the rim of his cup. ‘No more drink,’ he said softly. His eyes were far away, so I drifted out of the dark into the light, and back again.

‘Are you betrothed?’ he asked. It was like a sword-thrust. I just nodded, looking down at my cup and tracing the devices climbing on it. God preserve me, they were marguerites.

‘Then you have the advantage of me,’ he said stiffly. Ah, Margetta, Margetta, I thought. Your neck the stem, your mouth the bloom. Would Jesu that I lay upon your breast. Gloucester was talking, steadily: ‘...she would hold my hand, beneath the table, out of the sight of her father and the butlers... her Saint’s Day, when she was eight years old...’

Mocker wine, you mock me!

‘...silly children... her hand all sticky with comfits.’ He was laughing at his own womanish talk, as if he feared his own laughter. ‘So were we bound, in sweetness.’

Sweetness, sweetness. I have sinned with Margetta. Nay, we are troth-plight. When I took her from her horse in the meadow—she laughed so lustily I was angered. So I cast her down among the grass and changed that mirth to tears and tears to smiles. In that sea of flowers she was the whitest flower of all. Ah, by St Valentine, she showed me the hottest love, after the first moments when she pleaded against my terrible work. And her parting speech! Lord! the bold quean! The honey of her! With a smile to blind the keenest sight (tears in my eyes, now): ‘I think—I shall not mislike marriage... my nurse lied!’ I silenced her with each fierce kiss: ‘Lady, beloved. Cease this wanton talk. You
will
like marriage, an I have aught to do with it!’

Now I have naught to do with it. I am in Flanders. With the fathomless North Sea between. My lusting, lovely lady. She has sinned with me. Is she, perchance, lying lovelocked with another at this hour? I sit a table’s breadth from the Duke of Gloucester, who is murmuring of Master Caxton, lately visited... Richard, who neither knows, nor cares; while the King, through his own shoddy treatment of John Neville, lies merrily with Madame de Faro and lets his kingdom be rent by wolves. French wolves. White wolves. Margetta in the meadow-grass. Daisies pied. A pie’s nest. Some fellow, it may have been I, sprang up with the clatter of a wine-cup. The pie’s nest struck the board with a great din, and pain entered my clenched hand.

‘God’s curse on his pie’s nest. And on those who... who make such the dole of faithful followers!’

Then I seated myself, very wet and glistening around the lips, and my wine sang a merry lay inside my head.

My lord of Gloucester was looking at me.

‘Does he speak of the King?’ he murmured. His eyes dropped; he traced a little wine pattern on the oak.

‘Sir, I spoke without thinking,’ was all that I could manage. ‘Nay, you spoke from the heart,’ he replied evenly. ‘But as you are mad with drink, I must restore you first to your senses before you answer the pledge I would put to you.’

I had cursed the King! He had but to reveal himself, summon Gruthuyse’s guard, and forever, farewell, Margetta. Yet all he did was to reach out and close his left hand around mine, speaking slowly.

‘Below, those
bourgeoisie
. You saw? Trying their strength and skill. Let us essay our force likewise. Will you play?’ He went on as if I were not there: ‘Can he really be such a bold and traitorous fellow?’ He raised his eyes, and our looks swam together. He stripped his sleeve in one swift movement. Holy Mother, his arm is slender as a maid’s beside mine—I shall break his bones. But I laid my forearm up against his and our fingers locked in mid-air, wavering like the little bowl of flame beneath them on the table.